Saint's Progress eBook

“He knows there was something; he’s got
second sight, I think. But I mind him less than
anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?”

“Powerful, but it hurts, somehow.”

“Let’s go down and see it.”

The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its
intense modernity made that old-fashioned room seem
lifeless and strange. The black figure, with
long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had
a frightening actuality. The face, three-quarters
full, was raised as if for inspiration, and the eyes
rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a girl
painted and hung on a background of wall above the
piano.

“It’s the face of that girl,” said
Gratian, when they had looked at the picture for some
time in silence:

“No,” said Noel, “it’s the
look in his eyes.”

“But why did he choose such a horrid, common
girl? Isn’t she fearfully alive, though?
She looks as if she were saying: ‘Cheerio!’”

“She is; it’s awfully pathetic, I think.
Poor Daddy!”

“It’s a libel,” said Gratian stubbornly.

“No. That’s what hurts. He
isn’t quite—­quite all there.
Will he be coming in soon?”

Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. “Would
you like me at dinner or not; I can easily be out?”

Noel shook her head. “It’s no good
to funk it. He wanted me, and now he’s
got me. Oh! why did he? It’ll be
awful for him.”

Gratian sighed. “I’ve tried my best,
but he always said: ’I’ve thought
so long about it all that I can’t think any longer.
I can only feel the braver course is the best.
When things are bravely and humbly met, there will
be charity and forgiveness.’”

“There won’t,” said Noel, “Daddy’s
a saint, and he doesn’t see.”

“Yes, he is a saint. But one must think
for oneself—­one simply must. I can’t
believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?”

“I don’t know. When I was going
through it, I prayed; but I don’t know whether
I really believed. I don’t think I mind
much about that, one way or the other.”

“I mind terribly,” said Gratian, “I
want the truth.”

“I don’t know what I want,” said
Noel slowly, “except that sometimes I want—­life;
awfully.”

And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other
with a sort of wonder.

Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue
frock that evening, and at her neck she hung a Breton
cross of old paste, which had belonged to her mother.
When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery
and stood by the baby’s cot. The old nurse
who was sitting there beside him, got up at once and
said: